The Garden of Paradise by Hans Christian Andersen. Short summary

5 seconds

The prince wanted to see the Garden of Eden, and thanks to the East Wind he got there. But, carried away by the fairy, he, like Adam once, broke the covenant and found himself back on earth. But the vision of the Garden of Eden beckoned him.

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The prince remembered his grandmother’s story of the Garden of Eden. He had condemned Adam and Eve for eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and said he himself would never have done so.

One day he was walking in the woods and it was raining. The prince reached the cave where the wind and his mother lived. She offered the soaked prince a chance to dry off.

Her sons began to return and told where they had been. The East Wind came later than all of them. He had seen many interesting things in China. In the morning he was to fly to the Garden of Eden to give the Fairy Lady a message from the Phoenix Bird. The prince asked to go with him.

In the morning, the prince awoke on the wings of the East Wind. They flew over the Himalayas and entered the narrow Cave of Death. After passing through it, they found themselves in the Garden of Eden.

It was even better here than the prince had been told by his grandmother. He wanted to stay here forever. The fairy made a condition: for a hundred years she would be beckoning him under the tree of knowledge, and if he endured and did not kiss her, he could stay forever.

On the first night, the prince could not resist and kissed the fairy.